Thursday, April 29, 2010

After I lettered this page and pencilled the first panel I made a small copy of the board and started working out the rest of the layouts. I don't know what happened with Mary Lincoln's "sob"... looks like someone in production removed it, leaving an odd, empty balloon.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Not much "drawing" on this page, but working out the best way to show the big block of darkness was a challenge. Since so much of the page would be large areas of solid black, I did a marker rough after I pencilled in the lettering.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

I started out thinking that this one would be fun: The idea was to show Funky Flashman hawking a bunch of Superman merchandise. Funky first appeared in Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle series and was allegedly inspired by Stan Lee. I sent in this rough sketch and had the following conversation with the editor: "We'd like Funky to look less like Stan." "But isn't he SUPPOSED to look like Stan!?" "Yeah, but we LIKE Stan now so we don't want to make him mad." So I dug out my copy of Mister Miracle #6 and did my best to draw Funky as Kirby drew him, sans sunglasses, with the 1970's hairpiece and beard.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The first scan isn't a prelim or a layout, it's my first version of the pencils, before I went in and made a few small changes like George's hair and eye color. It's also worth noting that this was drawn before I stumbled on my secret trick for drawing footwear. Nice lettering by the amazing Todd Klein. This was published back in 1986.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Years ago, I inked a Bernie Wrightson Batman vs. Solomon Grundy 22-page story for DC. Bernie had already done a cover painting and there was some talk of doing another story to go with it and publishing them as a flip book, You know, the kind with two stories and two covers, both starting at opposite ends so that depending on which side of the book you begin with, you're reading a different story. Then when you finish the first story, you flip it over and start reading the other story from the opposite end. I always wondered if retailers liked them because they could display two copies -- side-by-side -- one with the A-side showing and one with the B-side. If a customer grabbed them quickly enough, he might think that he was getting two different comics instead of two copies of the same book. Anyway, Bernie didn't have time to do the second 22-page story but I was up for it. Various ideas were tossed around... maybe Superman and Bizarro? Hmmmm... that seemed to have some nice symmetry...

I got inspired and did this pen and ink piece, totally on spec, thinking the drawing would be fun to do, even if it was rejected by DC. Later, a DC editor said we absolutely could not use Bizarro in our story so it all just died right there. But I liked the drawing anyway. Nick Morgan, the fellow who bought it from me, suggested that I do a painted version, which I was finally able to pull together a couple of years ago. I like the piece in black and white, but this it really seemed to benefit from color so I'm grateful to Nick for giving me the chance to do it up right. The painting is acrylic on gessoed masonite, roughly 13" x 17".